(2022-08-02, 09:01 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]...
I think this is somewhat consistent with Buddha's imploring of his audience to consider the exhaustion of multiple lifetimes that leads one to seek Liberation. Who is he talking to if there is ultimately no self?
He is talking to the unconscious processes from which thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, and sense of self and no-self arise.
Do you choose your emotions? Do you choose your impulses? Do you consciously construct each individual thought? Can you concentrate without distracting thoughts interrupting you? Even if you feel like you are using your mind to try to solve a problem, where did the impulse to solve the problem come from? It can seem like one might be just an observer of mental activity, but that idea, that feeling, of being an observer comes from the the same unconscious processes that generate other thoughts an feelings. Each bit of mental activity acts like a pixel and when they are all taken together they create an image of a self. But when you look closely at the pixels you don't see self substance you see disconnected unrelated processes sometimes working at cross purposes and contradicting themselves, changing from moment to moment by cause and effect. The self is not a thing that is separate from those processes (
aggregates)
And it is not a question of materialism or spirituality, those unconscious processes could continue after the death of the body just as subjective experience continues. (
Do Buddhists Believe in a Soul).
The language and translations and definitions are what confuse the issue. The issue is not "is there self", the issue is "does what we think the self is actually exist?" It might be better if the term was "self as we believe it to be". Because that is the point of Buddhist practice: to help you see that what we think of as "self" is actually a misperception. When you see that it is a misperception, your egoistic attachments become much weaker and you don't make yourself
suffer as much because of them. Many people over many centuries, in many different cultures have experienced this. But it is not an objective fact, it is not something that is true or false, it is an opinion, it is a feeling (emotion). If you have it, you have it and experience the consequences. People who want the consequences (less suffering) are guided to do the practices to change their opinion.
One way to explain this is to use what I call the
magic-8-ball analogy. When you observe the activity of your mind you realize it is just a bunch of unconscious processes that determine your thoughts, emotions, impulses, opinions, etc - like a magic 8 ball. If you discovered there was a magic 8 ball determining these things you would not take them seriously. You would not be attached to them. You wouldn't think they are you or yours. In my opinion, it's like that.
And you don't become an unconscious zombie once you see through the misperception. Subjective experience continues, you see a blue sky, you feel love for your family. Most people already understand what I wrote about not choosing your emotions so it's not something you didn't already know. The same processes that keep us functioning in daily life continue before and after someone experiences the
perceptual shift. What changes is that you repeatedly observe the truth of it in meditation and daily life and it weakens your egoistic attachments. You don't ignore problems, but you can better respond with compassion and reason instead of out of control emotions. And the first stages of change are far from perfection, and
perfection is not attainable while in a biological body